Steel Kisses

by Laura Strickland

  “She sure doesn’t look like a prostitute. I’ve never seen a woman so pure and lovely. And anyway, it makes no sense. If she were a prostitute, why wouldn’t she live there—at the Crystal Palace? Why would she come every morning on the tram?”

  In the company of her sisters, as Sasha had said. Reynold could not but notice she always disembarked with a number of other women, often the same ones, though they never chattered or gossiped together like other girls walking along.

  “Sasha’s just picking on me,” he told the silent Mr. Kowal. “Since he knows I fancy her, he’ll never leave it alone.”

  Did he fancy her? No point in admitting it—prostitute or not, she was worlds above him. What woman would ever look at a man who toted corpses for a living? Might as well drive one of the wagons that hauled out shit from the public toilets of the city.

  “Not,” he told Mr. Kowal apologetically, “that I’m comparing you to a load of shit. Not at all. It’s just that I never expect to win a woman’s affection the way you did. I like women—I like them a lot. But I don’t suppose I’ll ever have a wife.”

  Mr. Kowal’s only response was a flop to the right as the cart rounded a corner. Reynold paused and straightened him surreptitiously. An idea occurred to him.

  He might adjust his route a bit while taking Mr. Kowal for this ride—go the long way, which would take them down Niagara Street.

  Past the Crystal Palace.

  Should he? As Liam always said, business must be kept to business; they had a certain sacred duty to their clients. But Mr. Kowal, who seemed quite sympathetic, might not mind.

  Muscles bulging, he pushed on to Niagara Street and took a right. He usually used the back streets; this thoroughfare, busy with steamcabs and pedestrians, would be more difficult to negotiate. But the Crystal Palace lay just ahead on the left, its doors open to the warm morning.

  Had he ever guessed what the place truly was? Not really. It looked like one of the fancy clubs that dotted the city, and he would have bet his life Buffalo wouldn’t permit a whorehouse to operate in this neighborhood.

  If asked, he supposed he’d have declared it a theater, albeit a private and very high-class one. Now, from the opposite side of the street, he and Mr. Kowal paused while he peered in.

  An automaton swept the front hall, which might explain why the doors stood open. One of the basic models, it had a shiny silver face with molded features, and it worked steadily, moving invisible dust.

  Even as Reynold watched, it progressed outside to sweep the broad stoop and stone steps, arms continuing their monotonous motion. Nothing else—absolutely nothing—could be seen inside.

  Reynold wondered whether automatons thought, and if so, what they thought about. Did they mind their endless tasks? Did they mind that they must always obey?

  ****

  Lily Landry sat perfectly motionless, her hands folded in the lap of her blue skirt, and listened as Dr. Landry spoke. Around her in careful rows sat her sisters, also listening quietly. Not one so much as twitched, and the only sound in the chamber was that of Dr. Landry’s voice.

  Landry’s Ladies they were called, named after Candace Landry because she had created them. Lily didn’t know a lot, but she knew that much. Knowing seemed like a magical ability; she had acquired certain knowledge since being activated, but not enough. She’d been created to learn easily, to adapt readily, and had a thirst for information.

  Now she discerned Dr. Landry felt angry. Dr. Landry—being human—had feelings. It had been borne in upon Lily that she and her sisters had no feelings and were, in fact, unworthy of them.

  Lily couldn’t be sure how she felt about having no feelings or the fact that Dr. Landry had been hollering at them for fifteen minutes, according to the big case clock in the corner. They met every morning before the start of the work day for instructions and what Dr. Landry called reinforcement of their training, but today was different.

  Dr. Landry had spent most of the time so far telling them what they were—and what they were not. As if Lily didn’t know. Every morning at the dormitory she reported to Kristoff, who stoked her internal furnace and made sure her boiler was full and operating properly. This before she even put on any clothes.

  Dr. Landry went on, “And you should perform your duties without dissent. You were created—constructed—to do nothing but that. It is the whole point of your existence. You are meant to relieve the human population of a tawdry and burdensome duty. The very idea that one of you should balk at providing any service is an abomination.”

  Lily raised her gaze to Dr. Landry’s face. In her late forties, Mrs. Landry could not be considered a beauty—not that Lily was intended to make those kinds of assessments. Tall and thin as a plank, Dr. Landry wore her brown hair in a severe bun that accentuated her sharp features: nose and chin like twin axes, merciless eyes. Lily had looked into many eyes since she’d been put into operation, mostly those of clients. She’d been trained to do so in order to gauge whether or not her actions pleased them, whether she fulfilled her purpose. Created to read signs, she excelled at it.

  Which told her Dr. Landry now held her temper by a thread.

  People, being superior to automatons, were allowed to lose their tempers. Automatons must simply endure.

  “Under no circumstances,” Dr. Landry stressed, “are you to refuse to fulfill a client’s wishes. These men—and occasional women—pay large sums of money to visit you. You will accommodate whatever they ask.”

  Money, as Lily knew, was a kind of god, a powerful one. It bestowed value—the more money something cost, the higher its worth.

  Odd they should cost so much to visit, then, when worth so little—not enough even to make their own choices.

  “Yesterday one of you attempted to refuse a service to a client. I am ashamed to say that client later came and complained to me. I wish never to feel ashamed of any of you. Discipline is required. Constance, step forward.”

  Lily jerked her gaze around. Constance had been built at the same time as she and operated out of the room at the end of her corridor. She now got to her feet, her face expressionless—or nearly expressionless. Did Lily see something in her eyes?

  Constance, as beautiful as all Dr. Landry’s ladies, had wide, hazel eyes and perfectly molded features. Today she wore a burnt amber gown, and her auburn hair had been piled atop her head.

  Like the rest of them, she had little resemblance to an ordinary automaton. That, as Dr. Landry also stressed, was the point. Constructed on the model of the hybrids that made up the Buffalo Police Force’s Irish Squad, Landry’s Ladies had steel frames fitted with real skin, hair, and eyes—all obtained from cadavers. Certain pertinent internal structures had also been implemented. Clients being serviced were not supposed to be able to tell these Ladies from human women. A miracle of engineering, Dr. Landry always declared them. But they remained her creations, and that gave her the power of life and death over them.

  Lily wondered what the discipline would entail and whether Candace wondered. Lily thought so. Candace walked to Dr. Landry’s side, where she stood, not quite still—trembling.

  “Candace,” Dr. Landry said with severity, “have you anything to say for yourself?”

  Candace parted her lips. Her fingers twisted together. Lily could almost hear her searching through her artificial intelligence for the right words to say.

  “Do you admit you refused the request of a client?”

  “I…” Candace’s gaze flitted over the listening automatons as if seeking help. It touched Lily and moved on. “I did not refuse, ma’am.”

  “That is not what he says. Do you accuse a patron of lying?”

  The tone of Dr. Landry’s voice implied that doing so would be considered far worse than disobedience, and Constance shook her head.

  “Then explain yourself.”

  “He—he wanted to perform an act I had undertaken with a previous client, one that hurt me. I merely protested…I did not refuse.”

  Dr
. Landry’s eyes fairly spat flame. “You are not permitted to protest. You are to be compliant—always. You are to display pleasure at whatever act is performed. Moreover”—Dr. Landry’s voice gathered steam, so to speak—“you could not have been hurt. You are not capable of feeling pain.”

  Constance stood for a moment, face expressionless, eyes full of anguish. “It hurt,” she whispered.

  “There is no hurt. It is not part of your experience. Do all of you understand this?”

  The seated automatons, Lily among them, nodded. She hoped Dr. Landry would let Constance sit down; Lily could see her legs shuddering.

  Instead, Dr. Landry turned to Constance and said, “You must learn this lesson. Discipline is clearly required. Your sentence is to be switched off for the period of two weeks.”

  Switched off. Though all the automatons remained silent, Lily felt horror sweep through their ranks. Terrifying. Unimaginable. When switched off, one ended. “Switched off” equated death.

  “No, ma’am, please,” Constance pleaded. “Not that. Anything else, I beg. I will obey—com-comply. I will do whatever he asks next time.”

  “Still attempting to defy me? To argue? Come here.”

  When Constance failed to move, appearing incapable, Dr. Landry stepped to her side and roughly fumbled with the back of her dress. “There is a secret switch,” she informed her listeners, though they all knew it already. “One only I can find.” She did something inside Constance’s clothes and the automaton sagged where she stood, the life draining out of her and the light leaving her eyes. Two wisps of steam came out of her nostrils.

  Dead.

  “Just remember, all the rest of you,” Dr. Landry said viciously, “as far as you’re concerned, I am not only your owner. I am God.”

  Chapter Three

  “Here you go, zadrota. You would not believe the great chances I had to take to get that.”

  Sasha slapped a thick wad of money down on the counter where Reynold worked. No craftsman, Reynold, but Liam sometimes assigned him the job of polishing the coffins or the brasswork. He labored at that now, buffing handles for their latest customer’s coffin.

  Kindly Mr. Kowal had long since been delivered to his wife and, presumably, planted in the ground. Reynold didn’t get to see that part. He sometimes thought what a shame it was, all the time and skill that went into making a coffin just for it to go into the ground. Liam said that wasn’t the point—the picture the bereaved carried away, in his or her mind, of their loved one resting in comfort was the point.

  Now the shop went silent as Liam, Pete, and Reynold all stared at the wad of bills.

  “What the hell?” Liam exclaimed.

  “What’s that for?” asked Pete.

  “For the zadrota to go see his expensive whore. The fool does not learn. He’s still running down the alley just to stare at her.”

  “By God!” Liam sounded angry. “Not that again. Will you not leave the lad alone?”

  “Leave him alone? Only look how generous I am with him. I won that at the pit last night. I might spend it on my own whore, da? Instead I give it to him so he can satisfy his yen.”

  “You’re talking about the dog pit, aye?” Liam snapped. “An abomination. I thought Jamie Kilter and the anti-cruelty league shut them all down.”

  “They are shut down.” Sasha waved a hand. “They open again in the back of another alley. So when I win all that, I think to help our friend, here.”

  “You don’t want to help him,” Pete put in. “You just want to spoil the illusions he’s carrying around in his head.”

  “You use big words, for a pipsqueak. If you mean I want to set the fool straight, then da, I do.”

  “Stop calling me a fool.” Reynold hated it when people questioned his intelligence. He touched the wad of money with one finger. Sasha was the fool, giving away so much dosh. Reynold should take it, just to show him.

  Liam said, “What Rey thinks is nothing to you. And you needn’t be surprised over Pete, either—my Clara teaches her bairns all sorts of words.”

  His Clara, as he called her, was due to deliver their first child any day, a child they’d been convinced would never come. Oh, they’d raised a household of waifs, Pete included, but had none of their own till now.

  Reynold liked the way Liam spoke of Clara, with love and respect. If he ever had a wife…

  He eyed the money again.

  “Take it,” said Pete who sometimes thought like Reynold. “Serves him right.”

  “Go ahead—take it.” Sasha grinned, displaying those ugly, stubby little teeth. “Go visit your pure flower. I ask around, and the way it works, you choose the lady you want to poke from a bunch of pictures they show you. Of course, you might have to wait, her being busy getting poked by some other man when you get there.”

  “You’re an arsehole, do you know it, Sasha Belsky?” Liam pronounced. “Don’t know why I keep you on.”

  “Because I am the best joiner in the city,” Sasha declared. “You know it. Old world craftsmanship, that is what you get from me.”

  Liam muttered something under his breath—it might have been fecker—and fixed Reynold with an intense blue stare. “Take the bastard’s money, Rey,” he advised.

  Reynold’s fingers moved of their own accord and snatched the wad.

  Sasha laughed out loud. “If only I might see his face when he learns the truth about his little dove!”

  ****

  Reynold straightened the front of his shirt for the fifth time and wondered if he looked good enough—respectable enough—for a trip to the Crystal Palace. He had a nagging fear they might toss him out on his ear, never so much as allowing him the chance to see the girl from the tram. Even given all Sasha had said, he didn’t feel convinced he needed only money to visit the place.

  He squinted at his reflection in the scrap of mirror that hung on the wall of his room. A wild crop of brown hair, thick and in need of a decent cut; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d visited a barber. A broad face with heavy cheekbones inherited from distant Welsh ancestors, or so his ma always said. Shoulders like a bull and a strongly-made body that could work all day without tiring. Mild brown eyes that even to him seemed to regard the world with a child’s confusion.

  What would the little dove, as Sasha called her, think of him?

  He scowled into the mirror. He didn’t know if he believed what Sasha said about the Crystal Palace—it wasn’t always wise to trust what Belsky said. He’d learned that much.

  But Liam McMahon wouldn’t lie to him, and Liam had implied if he took Sasha’s money up there he’d have a chance to see this woman, be in the same room with her.

  Touch her?

  He shivered where he stood. He still couldn’t accept it. He’d watched her through the bars every morning—this very morning. Her cool, poised perfection made a lie of Sasha’s assertion.

  The whores and doxies he’d seen stood on street corners and shouted at passersby and each other. They wore soiled dresses, had tangled hair and desperate eyes. They called up Reynold’s pity, not… Well, he couldn’t even say what he felt toward his dove. Admiration. Respect, maybe.

  Awe.

  He stepped away from the mirror and checked again to make sure the money remained in his pocket.

  Be a man, he chastened himself. You’re just going up there to see what’s what. Get a glimpse of her if you can. That’s all.

  ****

  An automaton met him at the door, not the one he’d seen sweeping the steps before. This one had painted features and wore a maid’s uniform. It regarded him with a blank stare and inquired politely, “May I help you, sir?”

  “I…wanted to come in.”

  The steamie opened the door more widely and bowed. Reynold stepped onto a floor so highly polished he could have shaved in it. The foyer was large, with a ceiling that went way up and a staircase that swept aloft in two great wings. The steamie waved Reynold to a seat on a sofa—red and plush—before ringing a bell
and subsiding into motionlessness.

  A woman appeared from a room on the left. Tiny yet aristocratic, she had snowy white hair arranged in curls atop her head and wore an elaborate, dark blue gown. She also wore a pendant and chain attached to a pair of pince-nez through which she scrutinized Reynold, up and down.

  “Yes, sir, may I help you?”

  Reynold had this part memorized. He’d practiced the words all the way up the street so he’d get them right and not make a fool of himself. He began, “I’d like—” before all words deserted him and his throat closed.

  The woman cocked her head at him. He tried again. “I understand you have girls here.”

  “Girls?”

  Reynold, suddenly convinced this must be some elaborate joke on Sasha’s part—that Liam had somehow been persuaded to join in—wanted to fall through the floor.

  The woman took a step closer, lowered her voice and said very politely, “I am afraid the company of our ladies—Landry’s Ladies, as they are called—is quite expensive.”

  “I have money.”

  Her eyes sharpened. “A visit costs a minimum of fifty dollars.”

  Holy shit. “How long?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “For how long would I get to…visit, for fifty dollars?”

  “Two hours. Longer visits are available at proportionate cost. That includes all services.”

  “All?”

  “Whatever you want the girl to do for you. They are trained to provide any comfort you desire.”

  Reynold’s face burned—not because he found himself discussing such a thing with a woman but because it seemed Sasha had not lied after all. Of course he hadn’t seen her yet—his dove. That might still be a lie on Sasha’s part. Sure, this could be a high-priced whore house, but…

  He whispered, “I would like two hours. I was given to understand I’d get to choose…”

  “The lady with whom you’d like to spend time? Yes.” She seemed to reach a decision. “Please come in.”

  She escorted him into the room from which she’d emerged, empty except for two gentlemen who sat on a sofa over against the far wall, conversing. That they were gentlemen Reynold could not doubt. Their manner, even more than their expensive clothing, declared it.